


partners in justice (or something)

by sapphicish



Category: Watchmen (TV), Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Stakeout, it's just a thinly veiled excuse for these two to be in a car together for a bit, oh we're writing OBSCURE obscure fic?, this has no plot, this isn't explicitly romantic but i encourage you to read into it as deep as you like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-02-07 21:24:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21464767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicish/pseuds/sapphicish
Summary: "So," Laurie yawned. "Come here often?""…What?" Night gave her a long, odd look.Laurie snorted. "A joke. Just a joke. Don't mind me. Not a surprise that you're not a fan of them."
Relationships: Laurie Blake & Angela Abar | Sister Night
Comments: 4
Kudos: 28





	partners in justice (or something)

**Author's Note:**

> i think these 2 should kiss. did i write them kissing? not YET. WINK!!!!

"Hungry, Night?"

"Sorry?"

Laurie rolled her eyes. She could feel Night's eyes tracking her, hawk-like in the dark of the car. As if she expected to be force fed poison out of the blue or something.

"Are - you - hungry," she elaborated, drawn out and painstakingly slow. To make it clearer she jiggled the bag of sour cream and onion chips in the other woman's direction, tossing another in her mouth while she was at it.

"No," Night sighed, settling back into her seat. "Thanks."

"Suit yourself," Laurie said. "More for me." She let Night watch her and she reached down to pull the handle under her seat that made it recline, fishing for another chip. She was near to the bottom of the bag now, hardly anything more than crumbs left, but for stakeouts she always came prepared, so of course she had a backup bag of beef jerky.

Night, in comparison, had brought nothing but her face paint and that rosary Laurie couldn't stop glancing at from the corner of her eye.

"So," Laurie yawned. "Come here often?"

"…What?" Night gave her a long, odd look.

Laurie snorted. "A joke. Just a joke. Don't mind me. Not a surprise that you're not a fan of them."

It wasn't as if she could blame Night for that. She wasn't much of a fan, either. There was nothing good to joke about, usually. Unless you pointed out that life itself was the joke, but then you were the weird, grim asshole at the party.

"I'm fine with jokes," Night said.

"Oh, so it's just mine that make you sour, huh?"

"Now you're getting it."

Laurie barked a laugh, because god damn it if the droll tone of Night's voice wasn't a little funny. Or maybe it was the late night and the stuffy car getting to her. Maybe it was that she'd been forced into this thing for up to three hours now, waiting for an asshole with ties to the Kavalry show up at this crappy trailer park so that Night could beat his ass. Or, as the cops around here called it, _interrogation,_ like it wasn't actually just beating someone within an inch of their lives or a real bad concussion until they gave up all the answers they had. She didn't mind it – it was effective, it worked, and she knew it was probably fun, too.

It was her own fault, at least tonight. She'd volunteered to come along – no, not volunteered. Demanded. She didn't trust Night. There were secrets, things being kept from her, and she didn't care for that. It was just the principle of the thing. 

Really.

So now she was stuck.

Stuffy car. Cold night. Uncomfortable car seat. No more chips. Shitty company.

Great.

"So, Angela..."

She waited for the expected response, and that was exactly what she got; a quick little turn of the woman's head, a glare out of the darkness of that hood. She wanted to reach over and feel how that paint felt—if it was dry and cracking or as sleek as it looked. If somewhat hastily applied. She imagined doing that.

Then she imagined Night taking the rosary and strangling her with it, and thought better of it. Just barely, though. She had a gun, she could handle Night.

She just didn't want to, really.

Not like that.

"What." Night, or Angela, said.

"What was all of that with Trieu last week?"

Night blinked, bright white of her irises shuttered for a second. Laurie reached back for the pouch of jerky when she reached the chip powder at the bottom of the bag, struggling with the seal. She could never get these fucking things open, maybe she just didn't have the nails for it or maybe the seals were complete garbage—

Night took it from her and opened it, very easily, obnoxiously easily, then handed it back. "What are you talking about?"

"Thanks," Laurie said. "Back in that...vivarium. Something-something expressions, something-something _grief?_"

Night's eyes shuttered again. This time it didn't take a blink; something in them just closed suddenly, and Laurie recognized it well as the look of someone about to lie to her.

"Never mind," she said, chomping down on a piece of jerky and maintaining eye contact as she wrenched her head back to tear a chunk off with her teeth. "I was just curious." She smiled briefly, making sure they both knew it was fake.

Her smiles usually were, but it didn't hurt to be safe.

"Right," Night said, then nothing else.

They sat there for a while, not talking. Laurie offered the jerky a few times, and every time she was denied. At one point she knew if this lasted long enough Night would give in and just have some goddamn jerky already – stakeouts always made _her_ hungry, and she had guessed the woman might be the same—until now.

"Jesus, are your stakeouts always this boring around here?"

Night snorted. "I don't do them often," she said, pulling her mask down around her neck and rolling the window down for some fresh air that didn't smell like stale chips, leather, and jerky. Laurie could appreciate that, but _Christ_ it was freezing out. She reached back to shrug herself back into her coat, rubbing her hands together. "I usually run in and beat their asses and I don't have to wait for them to _show up_ first."

"So why are we waiting now?"

"This guy is squirrelly. Has been since Jenny first tracked him down. We don't catch him now, we won't be able to."

Laurie raised her eyebrows in disbelief. "Really?"

Night met her eyes for a second. "For a while. And we don't have a while. That's more time this guy spends supplying the Kavalry. And we've seen where that leads, right? You remember the guy with the bomb keyed to his heartbeat."

Laurie hummed noncommittally and let her seat recline further, closing her eyes to the dark interior of the car. "So how much of a stash do you think he's hiding in that shitty trailer? Weapons, drugs..."

"All of it. You should stay back."

"Fuck off," she said harmlessly, without bite, though the pause suggested she'd surprised Night anyway. She felt her mouth twitch before she could stop it. "I'm going in with you or we're leaving."

"_We?_"

"Yeah, Night. If I'm leaving this shithole, so are you."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Yes."

"No."

"Wow, we sound like a real pair of assholes here."

She heard Night snort, but she said nothing. So Laurie said nothing. She kept her eyes shut and dozed instead, running her fingers over the packaging of the jerky in her lap. The crinkling kept her awake enough, combating the instinct she had to drift off to the sound of the wind rustling through the trees outside and the buzz of cars passing on the road nearby.

Not that it would ever last long if she did drift off. She was a shit sleeper, especially when she wasn't alone. When she was alone she could focus, could drift off by staring at a crack in the ceiling for however long it took, even up to hours; when she was alone she could have a gun tucked under her pillow and her phone on her nightstand and she didn't have to think about the what ifs.

It was difficult to have that turned around on her—she didn't keep company, not the kind that lasted through the night.

"You cold?" Night asked at one point, the first time she'd started conversation on her own without Laurie nudging her along. It was only later that she mused on that, the breaking of the invisible and unspoken protocol between them. But right then, she was drifting, and she was cold, so all she did was nod lazily, eyes flicking open to the dark interior of the car.

"That obvious?" she asked, mumbled, knew it to be true because of how tired she'd gotten just so quick. She spent summers wide awake, hated them worse than winter, but winter was bad all on its own. Seasonal depression or something. She started thinking about Jon more, about where he was, about what he was doing. She'd stare too long at the sky, until she saw all the stars even when she blinked. Whole constellations written across the insides of her eyelids.

And she got tired. Bone-deep dead-tired.

Laurie closed her eyes again and listened to the sound of Night rolling the window up. "You got a blanket in here?"

"In the back," Night said. Laurie reached a hand back to feel blindly along the way, fishing a bundle of warm cloth from the floor in the back, balled up between the seats. She yanked it over herself, tucked it around her shoulders, kept her eyes shut.

"You better not be a heavy sleeper."

Laurie snorted. "I'm not. I'm not sleeping, either."

"Right."

"Shut up."

"I didn't say anything."

"It was your tone."

"_...Right._"

"Yeah, that's the one."

"Hey," Night said suddenly, sitting up straight. Laurie did the same when she saw where her gaze was pointed—to an ugly old pick-up driving in from the road, parking clumsily alongside the trailer. She winced at the sight of it. For someone who was so good at hiding away like an asshole, he sure did like his racist bumper stickers. "There he is."

Laurie put the jerky aside. "Game time," she said.

Night got out of the car.

It felt a little too natural for her liking: Night getting out of the car, then her getting out of the car, slamming the door shut, and following.

Like they were a team, and she was the poor sap that got roped into it so she had to be the lackey, the little sidekick.

She opened the door on her side and stepped out of the car anyway.

After all, her minor irritation about this whole thing was nothing compared to the glee she knew she'd feel when she saw Night shoving the head of a white supremacist down his own toilet.

(She did see that.)

(It was great.)

(She laughed, even though she was sure it was what the experts would call unprofessional or whatever-the-shit.)

(She said, _nice job._)

(Night shrugged while shoving the guy into her trunk. It was a cramped space. He shouted obscenities behind the duct tape. Laurie couldn't help herself—she laughed again.)

(It was great.)

**Author's Note:**

> no one is doing it like them


End file.
